It is known that, currently, electronic communications have become an essential and indispensable tool for any operation, both legal and illegal. Communications are used for all kinds of transactions, call and message generation, etc., from a source to a destination.
Telecommunications operators are the ones providing the infrastructures that manage, direct and store a large part of this traffic. These telecommunications operators are subjected to regulations, among others, for the use of the radio spectrum, which is limited, or for the use of telephone numbering resources, which are also finite.
Telecommunications operators, in addition, keep records of the transactions performed by users with the objective, among others, of pricing, registration of the numbers associated with them, billing references, as well as the record of any transactional data used in billing the user. These records are preserved for further verification of pricing and/or follow-up of the traffic on the part of the user.
Occasionally, judicial authorities request the telecommunications operators the recorded data of electronic transactions that were carried out, since they consider them trusted third parties for the purpose of providing these data, as well as any data that could help to determine the physical or legal persons that have done the act in question.
However, the search for data requested to the telecommunications operator is usually complicated by the fact that it is performed on records of high volume activity, normally designed for billing more than for the follow-up of data traceability. Therefore, the above mentioned search of the requested data may consume an enormous amount of resources for the telecommunications operator.
Once the data requested by the judicial authorities is located, the operator issues a certificate in which it explicitly states the transactional data requested, the frequency, destinations, as well as any information that was requested by the relevant judicial authority.
Also, there is among users this same need to have the capability of requesting this information to the communications operators in order to know and certify the transaction data itself, e.g. the transmitted data, the date, the receiving data or any other information useful to the user. This need could be motivated by the request from a third party to the user of the previously mentioned transactional data.
Various methods and systems are known in the current state of the art for the verification of transmission as well as of the integrity of the data contained in an electronic mail. These known methods normally provide proofs and contents of delivery and reception of electronic mails based on a technological solution that allows verifying the transmission.
However, the methods known in the current state of the art have the disadvantage that they implement algorithms and verifications that modify the contents of the message and they also require the comparison of the digital signature of the generated document to the digital signature stored in the server. These verifications are electronic and online, which may be a disadvantage for some third parties requesting this service.
To that end, in case a transmitting user wishes to certify an electronic mail message, the message passes through a second route that implies the delivery of the message to the recipient through the server of a certifying entity, instead of the traditional route for delivery to the recipient. However, this presents a disadvantage since the message is manipulated in this delivery through the certifying entity's server so that the message that is finally received by the recipient is not really the original sent by the sender, but the one transformed by the certifying entity.
Besides the above mentioned, the methods known in the current state of the art file a unique cryptographic algorithm associated to each message, i.e., the digital signature. Later, in case the message needs to be verified, the digital signature of a generated document must be compared to the digital signature stored in the server of the certifying entity and, again, a comparison algorithm must be made between the cryptographic algorithm, which is the data generated and stored by the system known in the current state of the art, and the above comparison must be carried out using a comparison algorithm.
As a special case, in which proof of the delivery to the recipient is needed, there is the delivery of the invoices issued by a generating user to be able to show that, subsequently to the reception of the provision of services or products, a receiving user gets the invoice for those services, thus avoiding that the receiving users of a product or service claim non-receipt of the corresponding invoice to avoid or delay payment of the same.
The methods known in the current state of the art for official notification, such as the telegram, office fax or registered letter have several disadvantages such as the non-mechanization of the process, which results in an elevated time consumption as well as a high cost.
The invention object of this application provides a solution to the previously explained disadvantages through a simple certification method that includes transmission data, the transmitted data, the transmitting operator, the destination operator and the final transmission status' data.